Part 16

The temple of which this day was apparently the _dies natalis_ dated from the Veientine War, 396 B.C., and was the result of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus[622]. An earlier temple was attributed to Servius Tullius; but it is extremely improbable that anything more than a _sacellum_ or altar existed at such an early date[623]. The cult of Mater Matuta was widely extended in Italy, and clearly of genuine and ancient Italian origin; she can be separated with certainty from the Greek goddess Leucothea with whom Ovid mixes her up, and from whom she derived a connexion with harbours which did not originally belong to her[624]. The evidence for the wide spread of her cult consists of (1) two extremely old inscriptions from Pisaurum in Umbria, of which Mommsen observes, ‘lingua meram vetustatem spirat’[625]; (2) certain inscriptions and passages of Livy which prove that her worship existed among the Volsci, in Campania, and at Praeneste[626]. At Satricum she was apparently the chief deity of the place and probably also at Pyrgi, the port of Caere in Etruria[627]. The cult seems to have had some marked peculiarities, of which one or two fragments have come down to us. Only the wife of a first marriage could deck the image of the goddess[628]; no female slaves were allowed in the temple except one, who was also driven out of it with a box on the ear, apparently as a yearly recurring memorial of the rule[629]; the sacred cakes offered were cooked in old-fashioned earthenware[630]; and, lastly, the women are said to have prayed to this goddess for their nephews and nieces in the first place, and for their own children only in the second[631]. All that can be deduced from these fragments is that the Mater Matuta was an ancient deity of matrons, and perhaps of the same type as other deities of women such as Carmenta, Fortuna, and Bona Dea[632]. The best modern authorities explain her as a goddess of the dawn’s light and of child-birth, and see a parallel in Juno Lucina[633]; and Mommsen has pointed out that the dawn was thought to be the lucky time for birth, and that the Roman names Lucius and Manius have their origin in this belief[634]. Lucretius shows us that in his day Mater Matuta was certainly associated with the dawn[635]:

roseam Matuta per oras Aetheris auroram differt et lumina pandit.

We should, however, be glad to be more certain that Matuta was originally a substantive meaning dawn or morning. Verrius Flaccus[636] seems to have believed that the words _mane_, _maturus_, _matuta_, _manes_, and _mānus_, all had the meaning of ‘good’ contained in them; so that Mater Matuta might after all be only another form of the Bona Dea, who is also specially a woman’s deity. But this cult was not preserved, like that of Vesta, by being taken up into the essential life of the State, and we are no longer able to discern its meaning with any approach to certainty.

It is noticeable that this day was, according to Ovid[637], the dedication of a temple of Fortuna, also _in foro boario_: but no immediate connexion can be discovered between this deity and Mater Matuta. This temple was remarkable as containing a wooden statue, veiled in drapery, which was popularly believed to represent Servius Tullius[638], of whose connexion with Fortuna we shall have more to say further on. No one, however, really knew what the statue was; Varro and Pliny[639] write of one of Fortuna herself which was heavily draped, and may have been the one in this temple. Pliny says that the statue of Fortuna was covered with the _togae praetextae_ of Servius Tullius, which lasted intact down to the death of Seianus; and it is singular that Seianus himself is said to have possessed a statue of Fortuna which dated from the time of Servius[640], and which turned its face away from him just before his fall. Seianus was of Etruscan descent, we may remember; Servius Tullius, or Mastarna, was certainly Etruscan; and among Etruscan deities we find certain shrouded gods[641]. These facts seem to suggest that the statue (or statues, if we cannot refer all the passages above quoted to one statue) came from Etruria, and was on that account a mystery both to the learned and the ignorant at Rome. To us it must also remain unexplained[642].

ID. IUN. (JUNE 13). NP.

FERIAE IOVI. (VEN.)

IOVI. (TUSC.)

To these notes in the calendars we may add a few lines from Ovid:

Idibus Invicto sunt data templa Iovi. Et iam Quinquatrus iubeor narrare minores: Nunc ades o coeptis, flava Minerva, meis. Cur vagus incedit tota tibicen in urbe? Quid sibi personae, quid stola longa volunt?

All Ides, as we have seen, were sacred to Jupiter; they are so noted in the surviving calendars in May, June, August, September, October and November, and were probably originally so noted in all the months[643]. On this day the _collegium_ or guild of the tibicines feasted in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus[644]. The temple referred to by Ovid of Jupiter Invictus as having been dedicated on this day may possibly have been one of two mentioned by Livy as dedicated on the Capitol in B.C. 192[645]; but the coincidence of a dedication-day with the Ides may perhaps suggest a higher antiquity[646].

For the right meaning and derivation of the word Quinquatrus the reader is referred to what has been already said under March 19. June 13 was usually called Quinquatrus minusculae, not because it was really Quinquatrus (i. e. five days after the Ides), but because through the feast of the tibicines it was associated with their patron Minerva[647], in whose temple on the Aventine they met, apparently before they set out on the revelling procession to which Ovid refers[648]. Varro makes this clear when he writes ‘Quinquatrus minusculae dictae Iuniae Idus _ab similitudine_ maiorum’[649], i. e. it was not really Quinquatrus, but was popularly so called because the other festival of Minerva and her followers bore that name. Verrius Flaccus was equally explicit on the point: ‘Minusculae Quinquatrus appellantur quod is dies festus est tibicinum, qui colunt Minervam cuius deae proprie festus dies est Quinquatrus mense Martio’[650].

The revelry of the tibicines, during which they wore the masks and long robes mentioned by Ovid, was explained by a story which the poet goes on to tell, and which is told also by Livy and by Plutarch with some variations[651]; how they fled to Tibur in anger at being deprived by Appius Claudius the censor of their feast in the Capitol: how they were badly missed at Rome, tricked and made drunk by a freedman at Tibur, and sent home unconscious on a big waggon. The story is genuinely Roman in its rudeness and in the rough humour which Ovid fully appreciates; the favourite feature of a secession is seen in it, and also the peaceful settlement of difficulties by compromise and contract. I see no reason why it should not be the echo of an actual event, though in detail it is obviously intended to explain the masks and the long robes. These are to be seen represented on a coin of the gens Plautia[652], to which the fierce censor’s milder colleague belonged, who negotiated the return of the truants. Plutarch calls the ‘stolae longae’ women’s clothes; but it is more natural to suppose that they were simply the dress of Etruscan pipe-players of the olden time[653].

The story well shows the universal use of the _tibia_ in all sacred rites; the tibicines were indispensable, and had to be got back from Tibur by fair means or foul. As Ovid says:

Cantabat fanis, cantabat tibia ludis, Cantabat maestis tibia funeribus.

The instrument was probably indigenous in Italy, and the only indigenous one of which we know. ‘The word _tibia_,’ says Professor Nettleship[654], ‘is purely Italian, and has, so far as I can find, no parallel in the cognate languages.’ Müller, in his work on the Etruscans, does indeed assume that the Roman tibicines were of Etruscan origin, which would leave the Romans without any musical instrument of their own. The probability may rather be that it was the general instrument of old Italy, specially cultivated by the one Italian race endowed with anything like an artistic temperament.

XII KAL. IUN. (JUNE 20). C.

SUMMAN[O] AD CIRC[UM] MAXIM[UM]. (VEN. ESQ. AMIT.)

To this note may be added that of Ovid[655]:

Reddita, quisquis is est, Summano templa feruntur, Tum cum Romanis, Pyrrhe, timendus eras.

The date of the foundation of the temple of Summanus was probably between 278 and 275 B.C.[656]; the foundation was the result of the destruction by lightning, no doubt at night, of a figure of Jupiter on the Capitol[657]. Who was this Summanus? Ovid’s language, _quisquis is est_, shows that even in his time this god, like Semo Sancus, Soranus, and others, had been fairly shouldered out of the course by more important or pushing deities. In the fourth century A.D. S. Augustine[658], well read in the works of Varro and the Roman antiquarians, could write as follows: ‘Sicut enim apud ipsos legitur, Romani veteres nescio quem Summanum, cui nocturna fulmina tribuebant, coluerunt magis quam Iovem—sed postquam Iovi templum insigne ac sublime constructum est, propter aedis dignitatem sic ad eum multitudo confluxit, ut vix inveniatur, qui Summani nomen, quod audire iam non potest, se saltem legisse meminerit.’ In spite of the decay and disappearance of this god we may believe that the Christian Father has preserved the correct tradition as to his nature when he tells us that he was the wielder of the lightning _of the night_, or in other words a nocturnal Jupiter. We do in fact find a much earlier statement to the same effect traceable to Verrius Flaccus[659]. Varro also mentions him and classes him with Veiovis, and with the Sabine deities whom he believed to have been brought to Rome by Tatius[660]. There is, however, no need to suppose with Varro that he was Sabine, or with Müller that he was Etruscan[661]; the name is Latin and probably = Submanus, i. e. the god who sends the lightning before the dawn.

It is interesting to find the wheel symbol here again, as is noticed by Gaidoz in his _Studies of Gallic Mythology_[662]. We can hardly doubt that the Summanalia which Festus explains as ‘liba farinacea in modum rotae ficta[663]‘, were cakes offered or eaten on this day: it is hard to see what other connexion they could have had. Mr. Arthur Evans has some interesting remarks[664] on what seem to be moulds for making religious cakes of this kind, found at Tarentum; they are decorated, not only with the wheel or cross, but with many curious symbols. ‘It is characteristic,’ he writes, ‘in a whole class of religious cakes that they are impressed with a wheel or cross, and in other cases divided into segments as if to facilitate distribution. This symbolical division seems to connect itself _with the worship of the ancestral fire_ rather than with any solar cult. In a modified form they are still familiar to us as “hot-cross buns.”’ Summanus, however, does not seem to have had anything to do with the ancestral fire.

VIII KAL. QUINCT. (JUNE 24). C.

FORTI FORTUNAE TRANS TIBER[IM] AD MILLIAR[IUM] PRIM[UM] ET SEXT[UM]. (AMIT.)

FORTIS FORTUNAE. (VEN. PHILOC.)

SACRUM FORTIS FORTUNAE. (RUST.)

Ovid writes of this day as follows[665]:

Ite, deam laeti Fortem celebrate, Quirites! In Tiberis ripa munera regis habet. Pars pede, pars etiam celeri decurrite cymba, Nec pudeat potos inde redire domum. Ferte coronatae iuvenum convivia lintres: Multaque per medias vina bibantur aquas. Plebs colit hanc, quia, qui posuit, de plebe fuisse Fertur, et ex humili sceptra tulisse loco. Convenit et servis; serva quia Tullius ortus Constituit dubiae templa propinqua deae.

H. Peter, in his additional notes to Ovid’s _Fasti_[666], has one so lucid on the subject of the temples of Fors Fortuna mentioned in this passage that I cannot do better than reproduce it. ‘We find three temples of the goddess mentioned, all of which lay on the further side of the Tiber. The first was that of Servius Tullius mentioned by Varro in the following passage[667]: “Dies Fortis Fortunae appellatus ab Servio Tullio rege, quod is fanum Fortis Fortunae secundum Tiberim extra urbem Romam dedicavit Iunio mense.” The second is one stated by Livy[668] to have been built by the consul Spurius Carvilius in 460 B.C. near the temple of Servius. The third is mentioned by Tacitus[669] as having been dedicated at the end of the year 17 A.D. by Tiberius, also on the further side of the Tiber in the gardens of Caesar. Of these three temples the third does not concern us in dealing with Ovid’s lines, because it was completed and dedicated long after the composition of the sixth book of the _Fasti_, perhaps at a time when Ovid was already dead; we have to do only with the first two. Now we find in the _Fasti_ of Amiternum[670] the following note on the 24th of June: “Forti Fortunae trans Tiberim ad milliarium primum et sextum”; and this taken together with Ovid suggests that either besides the temple of Carvilius there were two temples of Fors Fortuna attributed to Servius, or (and this appears to me more probable) the temple of Carvilius itself was taken for a foundation of Servius as it had the same dedication-day and was in the same locality. In this way the difficulties may be solved.’ I am disposed to accept the second suggestion of Peter’s; for, as Mommsen has remarked[671], it is quite according to Roman usage that Carvilius should have placed his temple close to a much more ancient _fanum_ of the same deity; i. e. the principle of the locality of cults often held good through many centuries.

Many cults of Fortuna were referred to Servius Tullius, but especially this one, because, as Ovid says, it was particularly a festival of the plebs of which he was the traditional hero; and also because it was open to slaves, a fact which was naturally connected with the supposed servile birth of this king. The jollity and perhaps looseness of the occasion seemed to indicate a connexion between the lower stratum of population and the worship of Fortuna: ‘On foot and in boats,’ says Ovid, ‘the people enjoyed themselves even to the extent of getting drunk.’ We are reminded in fact of the plebeian license of the festival of Anna Perenna in March[672]. It is perhaps worth noting that on June 18 the calendar of Philocalus has the note _Annae Sacrum_, which unluckily finds no corroboration from any other source. Whether it was an early popular cult, whether it was connected in any way with that of Fors Fortuna, and whether both or either of them had any immediate relation to the summer solstice, are questions admitting apparently of no solution.

It has rarely happened that any Roman cult has been discussed at length in the English language, especially by scholars of unquestionable learning and resource. But on the subject of Fortuna, and Fors Fortuna, an interesting paper appeared some years ago by Prof. Max Müller in his volume entitled _Biographies of Words_[673], which I have been at great pains to weigh carefully. The skill and lucidity with which the Professor’s arguments are, as usual, presented, make this an unusually pleasant task.

He starts, we must note, with a method which in dealing with Italian deities has been justly and emphatically condemned[674]; he begins with an etymology in order to discover the nature of the deity, and goes on to support this by selecting a few features from the various forms of the cult. This method will not of course be dangerous, if the etymology be absolutely certain; and absolute certainty, so far as our present knowledge reaches, is indeed what the Professor claims for his. Though we may doubt whether the science of Comparative Philology is as yet old and sure enough to justify us in violating a useful principle in order to pay our first attentions to its results, we may waive this scruple for the present and take the etymology in this case at the outset.

The Professor alludes to the well-known and universally accepted derivation of Fors and Fortuna from _ferre_, but rejects it: ‘I appeal to those who have studied the biographies of similar Latin words, whether they do not feel some misgiving about so vague and abstract a goddess as “Dea quae fert,” the goddess who brings.’ But feeling the difficulty that Fortuna may not indeed have been originally a deity at all, but an abstract noun which became a deity, like Fides, Spes, &c., in which case his objection to the derivation from _ferre_ would not apply, he hastens to remove it by trying to show from the early credentials of Fortuna, that she did not belong to this latter class, but has characteristics which were undoubtedly heaven-born. The process therefore was this: the ordinary etymology, though quite possible, is vague and does not seem to lead to anything; is there another to be discovered, which will fulfil philological requirements and also tell us something new about Fortuna? And are there any features to be found in the cult which will bear out the new etymology when it is discovered?

He then goes on to derive the word from the Sanskrit root HAER, ‘to glow,’ from which many names expressive of the light of day have come: ‘From this too comes the Greek Χάρις with the Χάριτες, the goddess of morning; and from this we may safely derive _fors_, _fortis_, taking it either as a mere contraction, or a new derivative, corresponding to what in Sanskrit would be _Har-ti_, and would mean the brightness of the day, the Fortuna _huiusce diei_.’

So much for the etymological argument; on which we need only remark, (1) that while it may be perfectly possible in itself, it does not impugn the possibility of the older derivation; (2) that it introduces an idea ‘bright,’ hardly less vague and unsubstantial than that conveyed by ‘the thin and unmeaning name’ _she who brings or carries away_. When, indeed, the Professor goes on, by means of this etymology, to trace Fortuna to a concrete thing, viz. the dawn, he is really making a jump which the etymology does not specifically justify. All he can say is that it would be ‘a most natural name for the brightest of all goddesses, the dawn, the morning, the day.’

He looks, however, for further justification of the etymology to the cult and mythology of Fortuna. From among her many cult-names he selects two or three which seem suitable. The first of these is Fortuna _huiusce diei_. This Fortuna was, he tells us, like the Ushas of the Veda, ‘the bright light of each day, very much like what we might call “Good morning.”’ But as a matter of fact all we know of this Fortuna is that Aemilius Paullus, the victor of Pydna, vowed a temple to her in which he dedicated certain statues[675]; that Catulus, the hero of Vercellae, may have repaired or rebuilt it, and that on July 30, the day of the latter battle, there was a sacrifice at this temple[676]. Whatever therefore was the origin of this cult (and it may date no further back than Pydna) it seems to have been specially concerned, as its name implies, with the events of particular famous days. It is pure guesswork to imagine that its connexion with such days may have arisen from an older meaning, viz. the _bright light of each day_. Nothing is more natural than the _huiusce diei_, if we believe that this Fortuna simply represented chance, that inexplicable power which appealed so strongly to the later sceptical and Graecized Roman, and which we see in the majority of cult-names by which Fortuna was known in the later Republic. The advocate of the dawn-theory, on the other hand, has to account for the total loss in the popular belief of the nature-meaning of the epithet and cult—a loss which is indeed quite possible, but one which must necessarily make the theory less obvious and acceptable than the ordinary one.

Secondly, the Professor points out, that on June 11, the day of the Matralia, Fortuna was worshipped coincidently with Mater Matuta—the latter being, as he assumes beyond doubt, a dawn-goddess. But we have already seen that this assumption is not a very certain one[677]; and we may now add that the coincident worship must simply mean that two temples had the same dedication-day, which may be merely accidental[678].

But the chief argument is based on the cult of Fortuna Primigenia, ‘the first-born of the gods,’ as he translates the word, in accordance with a recent elaborate investigation of its meaning[679]. This cult does indeed show very curious and interesting characters. It belonged originally to Praeneste, where Fortuna was the presiding deity of an ancient and famous oracle. Here have been found inscriptions to Fortuna, ‘DIOVO[S] FILEA[I] PRIMOGENIA[I],’ the first-born daughter of Jupiter[680]. Here also, strange to say, Cicero describes[681] an enclosure sacred to Jupiter Puer, who was represented there with Juno as sitting in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammam appetens.’ This very naturally attracted Prof. Max Müller’s keenest attention, and he had no difficulty in finding his explanation: Fortuna is ‘the first-born of all the bright powers of the sky, and the daughter of the sky; but likewise from another point of view the mother of the daily sun who is the bright child she carries in her arms.’ This is charming; but it is the language and thought, not of ancient Italians, but of Vedic poets. The great Latin scholar, who had for years been soaking his mind in Italian antiquities, will hardly venture on an explanation at all: ‘haud ignarus quid deceat eum qui Aboriginum regiones attingat[682].’

I shall have occasion later on[683] to say something of this very interesting and mysterious cult at Praeneste. At present I must be content with pointing out that it is altogether unsafe to regard it as representative of any general ideas of ancient Italian religion. As Italian archaeologists are aware, Praeneste was a city in which Etruscan and Greek influences are most distinctly traceable, and in which foreign deities and myths seem to have become mixed up with native ones, to the extreme bewilderment of the careful inquirer[684]. We may accept the Professor’s explanation of it with all respect as a most interesting hypothesis, but as no more than a hypothesis which needs much more information than we as yet possess to render it even a probable one.

By his own account the Professor would not have been led so far afield for an explanation of Fortuna if he had not been struck by the apparent difficulty involved in such a goddess as ‘she who brings.’ Towards the removal of this difficulty, however, the late Mr. Vigfusson did something in a letter to the _Academy_ of March 17, 1888[685]. He equated Fors and Fortuna with the Icelandic _buror_, from a verb having quite as wide and general a meaning as _fero_, and being its etymological equivalent. ‘There is a department of its meanings,’ he tells us, ‘through which runs the notion of an invisible, passive, sudden, involuntary, chance agency’; and another, in which _bera_ means to give birth, and produces a noun meaning birth, and so lucky birth, honour, &c. The two ideas come together in the Norse notion of the Norns who presided at the birth of each child, shaping at that hour the child’s fortune[686].